Friday, January 25, 2013

It's the Bernie the Flumph Show!

What's a Flumph?

Look at this guy! Don't you love him?

Flumph's were introduced in the 1981
D&D accessory Fiend Folio.
These Lawful Good critters resemble floating jellyfish with acidic
spikes and a stink-spray defense mechanism. Nobody seems to like
flumphs, but I do. I think they're cool.

I
didn't start playing D&D until the arrival of Second Edition (I
was a Champions guy).
I was introduced to the flumph with the Monstrous
Compendium Annual Volume 2. This
book introduced the concept of monastic
flumphs—flumphs with cleric levels—a concept that hasn't carried
over to any of the current version of the flumph. I was immediately
taken with the flumph. The thought of good-hearted floating jellyfish
monsters with a clerical powers just appealed to me. I don't know
why. Maybe it's because they reminded me of Healie, Ragnar's buddy in my favorite old NES game Dragon Warrior IV.

Ragnar and Healie, fighter and "flumph"?

Flumphs have popped up here and there in D&D 3.x and Pathfinder,
but they're still considered something of a joke. But not here. Here
flumphs get the respect they deserve.

Who is Bernie the Flumph?

Back in the mid-late 90s, I spent a lot of time online in roleplaying
chat-rooms. After years of dealing with elder vampires, ascended
gods, and level-20 antipaladins, I decided I wanted to play something
different. A low-powered, inoffensive, friendly, but interesting
character. Thus was born Bernie the Flumph, a first-level flumph
cleric, sole survivor of the Grell conquest that destroyed his
homeland. Bernie didn't get much play, but he was always a refreshing
break from power-playing.

Bernie would show up years later as a reoccurring NPC in my D&D
3.0 Dragonstar campaign. Wayfarer Station (my PCs home port)
was a corrupt space station in a bad part of space. Bernie and his
friend T'odd (another flumph) were the only representatives of lawful
good on the sleazy station. They ran a small laundry business and
maintained an even smaller shrine to the Father (a lawful good
deity). Bernie & T'odd's Temple and Dry Cleaning was the place to
go to both heal your wounds and get the blood stains out of your
armor.

Bernie hasn't seen much use since Wayfarer Station, but when I needed
a mascot for this RPG blog, Bernie seemed to be the flumph for the
job.

Who am I?

I'm Josh Burnett. I've been playing RPGS for 25 years
now, always experimenting, always coming up with new things. I'm part
of Hex Games, creators of QAGS, and have helped produce several games
with them. I'm also an illustrator and cartoonist. You can see more
of my creative stuff on my Stegosaurus Studios blog.

In recent years, my gaming taste has spread across a wide variety of
tastes. One one side of the spectrum, I love new-agey high-narrative
“story games” like Prime Time Adventures. On the other
side of things, I equally love “Old School Reniasance” games like
Labyrinth Lord. For reference, two of my all-time favorite
games are Dogs in the Vineyard and Rules Cyclopedia D&D.

So what's this blog about?

This blog is a spin-off of my Stegosaurus Studios blog. I want to
refocus that blog on purely creative endeavors. Bernie the Flumph
will focus on RPG blogging—musings on theories and ideas, sharing
inspirations, actual plays, house rules, adventures, monsters,
resources, and all that sort of things.

While the blog ramps up, content-wise, I'll probably repost a number of bits and bobs from the Stegosaurus blog. There's some cool stuff there I'd like to share!

2 comments:

Heya man,As a fellow lover of bizarre monsters and scourer of the obscure I figured you'd like this: http://www.bogleech.com/dnd/flumph.html An explanation about the classic and updated Flumph and justification as to why it is awesome. I also recommend Bogleech's blog in general because... awesome monsters and stuff.

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Who I Am

I am a long-time gamer who enjoys both new-style story games and old-style OSR stuff. I love drawing maps and goofy monsters. I help write, layout, and illustrate games for Hex Games, and I keep taking stabs at creating webcomics with mixed results. I talk about RPGs (and other things) at my Bernie the Flumph blog.